attorney | author | broadcaster

Congress is out for 54 days so that representatives can head back to their home states and politic for reelection in November. They won’t be back before these elections have passed. Almost immediately after this was announced, Attorney General Eric Holder resigned. On top of that, key members of congress have balked at the President’s policies with regard to ISIS in Iraq and Syria, and have posited that he is not doing all that is necessary to protect our allies from the slow creep of organized Islamic Terrorists in the region.

This is what’s interesting to me: NLRB v. Noel Canning made it abundantly clear that the recess appointment powers of the President are limited to recess terms which are called by the Congress, not designated by the Executive. This was a blow to the administration and to certain rulings made by the NLRB during the period where a quorum of the board sat and heard cases, like Mr. Canning’s.

Now, the President has the designated recess he needs to appoint an Attorney General by recess appointment without Senate approval, and now members of Congress can continue politicking on what is prudent to do in Syria and Iraq while they do nothing to authorize the force that some of them say we need to use to win the fight against ISIS. So, the President gets the Attorney General of his choosing and gets to continue the rhetoric of a “do nothing” Congress while they continue to cultivate votes instead of putting their money where their mouth is.